NAKEDNESS

I read somewhere that a famous female poet thought that writing a poem was like standing naked before everyone. That is funny to me.

In reality, it's standing naked in front of about a dozen people.

This past month, I've been in a poetic slumber. Dormancy has a funny way of making the poet wonder when he or she will write again. Today, after prying the last two poems I'd written from hours of labors, these two poems emerged.

Looking for places to submit work, I invented work to submit. I'm flexible like that. I'm beginning to see the building of poems more as a discussion with what's happening within the poet, not how he/she enjambs or uses images. All the deeper level thinking works itself out if the poet trusts his/her intuition of what scares, excites, or in my case, consumes them. Whoever says write about what you're obsessed with isn't a genius, but they are all right. Poetic discussion often revolves around the making of poems. Do you have a routine? Do you read this? Do you barter with the muse for midnight snap-shots of ideas? I am beginning to believe that thinking about writing then you can't write, forcing yourself to be disciplined for the sake of motions and outer surface appearance, can be damaging and delay thoughts from settling.

This morning, I woke up and went grocery shopping at 6:50 AM. IT was exciting. To be doing something unusual, but familiar. Five loads of laundry and a stiffening walk to and from the laundromat later, and I found myself in the center of the poem--by the poem, I mean I consider all my poems one poem, a greater work which I am chipping away at.

Here's two more pieces, further fragments removed in effort to see what's beneath. I have been afraid to say things that may be unpopular. So I write about love, usually. Today, I feel the world opening up my narrow view of what there is to be said. It's a sort of agreement--what I need to say, what others might want or not want to hear.

FROM HAWAII

At the nursing home, my wife’s grandpa keeps a wedding photo
of his favorite grand-daughter as a bride and shows it
to all his friends. When asked, Why’d she married one of those?
he calmly replies, He’s from Hawaii. Is this the only way?

In my life, I have played along. Life as a dormant volcano,
my losses were few and deep—sacrifices for the ocean.
Tiny islands jet in continental shifts, there are places where fire
remains undisturbed by water. I listen as she tells this story.

Even I don’t know what those is. What can one who is not
himself, but undistinguishable, do against such annexation?
To claim my identity, I will live here and say what must be said:
This is my face. It is my only face.

For those who will not embrace me as American, a message.
I’m not giving you a choice. If you want me to be Hawaiian,
very well. Aloha. With so many stars in deep blue flag, why
should I play a ukulele? Careful, do you sip from this coconut.


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LIFE TOUR, 1982

You were alive then. After the Olympics,
when babies started pilgrimages
toward themselves.

My tour was a five-city puke fest.
A day and a half later,
Seoul, Hawaii, Seattle, Chicago

behind and before me forever, I landed
in New York. When I was young,
I traced this flight with a finger.

Moving along the textured globe, slowly,
we’re talking about years here, I arrived
in Hawaii twenty-two years later,

all the villagers coming out to greet me,
handing me candles and maps and
offering a night’s refuge before

I came and took America by storm.
An unlikely hero, hesitant, I handed
everything but the kickboard back.